Let's Encrypt Crowdfunding Campaign

ISRG/Organizational
1

We recently kicked off our first crowdfunding campaign and we need your help to reach our goal of raising $200,000. Contributions go towards operational and engineering staff, hardware and the software, and general operating expenses needed to securely and reliably issue and manage many millions of certificates.

We decided to run a crowdfunding campaign for a couple of reasons. First, there is a gap between the funds we’ve raised and what we need for next year. Second, we believe individual supporters from our community can come to represent a significant diversification of our annual revenue sources, in addition to corporate sponsorship and grants.

Most people here have probably benefited from Let’s Encrypt by getting certificates, but whether or not you use our certificate services you’re still benefiting when you browse a Web that’s more secure because of us.

We will provide updates on our progress throughout the campaign via Twitter (https://twitter.com/letsencrypt).

Thank you for your support!

6 Likes
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Hello, first and foremost I’d like to thank you for starting this donation campaign. As a daily user and HTTPS evangelist, I hope the community will hear your call.

I have a question regarding your promotional video though. At 01:20 it states that 200 000$ are required each month to keep Let’s Encrypt operational. This made me wondering: how does LE spend this money ?

Of course “contributions go towards operational and engineering staff, hardware and the software, and general operating expenses needed to securely and reliably issue and manage many millions of certificates.” but we — the community & donors — don’t have any figures, as far as I know, to better understand how it works.

So, for the sake of curiosity and transparency, can we have access to this information ?

Thank you and count me on the donors list =)

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Take a look at this blog post from back in September showing how that money is spent:

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That’s what I was looking for, thanks.
Out of curiosity, do you consider publishing your complete financial report in the “Policy and Legal Repository” section ?

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Certainly not in depth but this is an interesting read on the costs of running LetsEncrypt: https://letsencrypt.org/2016/09/20/what-it-costs-to-run-lets-encrypt.html

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I wonder, $2.06M for a team of ten, its about $17k for each every month, is that so expensive? I mean, with that money in my country you hire at least 5 guys very well paid. Now, my next question is, are you hiring? Is remote working an option? :slight_smile:

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@ngenen, see

That page says;

We currently have no open positions. If you’d like to submit a resume for consideration in future hiring, please submit to: it-jobs@linuxfoundation.org

All of our positions are remote and we can only hire in the United States and Canada.